Sure, electric cars may have won the power race in recent years with their insane horsepower figures and instant torque delivery, but nothing beats the outright fury of a big displacement engine. And when you speak about large displacement engine, there’s no way you don’t mention Bugatti’s massive 8.0-litre W16 monsters.
Which is why it surprised us that no one actually took a Bugatti Chiron onto the Dyno… or at least, none outside Bugatti’s own walled garden. Well, that is, until now – courtesy of a certain Cannonball Garage in Illinois.
And, uh, yeah now we understand why there hasn’t been a dyno’d Bugatti Chiron out there (or one that has been published, at least). First, there’s the whole thing about getting your hands on an ultra-limited hypercar. But even if you do have one, it’s not as simple as just strapping it on and mashing the go pedal.
Speaking to The Drive, Cannonball record holder and Cannonball Garage owner Arne Toman explained: “We had to line it up so perfectly because the rollers on the dyno are 81 inches wide – the [Chiron] is 80 inches wide… It was a careful operation to make sure we could dyno this thing safely. Everything was taken very slowly and cautiously, more than usual.”
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On top of that, Toman also said that the Chiron also has perhaps one of the world’s largest underbody cover (spanning over two-thirds of the car’s length), which they had to meticulously remove to be able to strap the car down properly.
But with all that being said and done, what figures did the Chiron manage on the dyno? According to Cannonball Garage’s runs, the 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16 engine in the Bugatti Chiron managed to lay down a whopping 1,369 hp and 1,577 Nm of torque, with peak figures coming in at 6,620 rpm and 5,060 rpm respectively.
Dynos are weird, and some over-correct for drivetrain losses. But even with a rough 15% estimate, we’d say that Bugatti’s own official figures (1,200 hp, 1,500 Nm) are actually pretty accurate, or even a little underrated!
Take that, electricity. You might have crazier numbers, but you’ll never beat the sound and fury of actual exploding fuel particles. And heck, this isn’t even the most powerful Chiron yet, and it’s already right about what the best EV hypercars out there are making now.
Long live the ICE.
